James O’Keefe has become the latest high-profile conservative to be banned from Twitter, just as he released a series of damning interviews against Hillary Clinton.
The Project Veritas President announced on Wednesday that Twitter issued a 12-hour ban because they alleged that he broke the websites’ rules. They assigned him with a countdown clock, but when the 12 hours elapsed the ban remained in place.
.@JamesOKeefeIII was just locked out of twitter after posting videos exposing corruption and fraud within the @HillaryClinton campaign. pic.twitter.com/kJ3LWXd039
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) October 12, 2016
On Thursday morning, Twitter retracted their time frame and made the ban indefinite. The social media site said that O’Keefe had broken their rules, including harassing or threatening users, disclosing someone else’s private information, and violating some other rule.
.@JamesOKeefeIII is STILL locked out of @twitter and they are suggesting that he delete his tweets. #FreeOKeefe #FreeO‘Keefe #FreeJames pic.twitter.com/6Mmakxip5t
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) October 13, 2016
His latest tweets contained information of a recent investigation into a Hillary Clinton staffer, who admitted that the campaign was very lax about sexual abuse, and a video about voter fraud in New York City. O’Keefe never made a personal attack against any one individual.
Twitter has a long history of banning conservative speech; most famously Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos.
O’Keefe told Red Alert Politics that he doesn’t believe it’s just a coincidence that only high profile conservatives are censored by social media.
“It’s political, plain and simple. We just embarrassed major Democratic Party voter policies, and then seriously embarrassed the Clinton campaign.”
Project Veritas was about to release a new video showing former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) admitting on a hidden camera that Clinton was prepared to issue an executive action on gun control if she was elected president.
“We were about to launch a video which embarrasses former Senators Feingold and Clinton. Remember that old saying about ‘it’s not paranoia if they are really out to get you.'”
Conservatives must ask themselves, in the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, “At first, Twitter banned Charles Johnson, and I did not tweet anything because I wasn’t a conspiracy theorist. And then they banned Milo Yiannopoulos, and I didn’t tweet anything because I wasn’t in the alt-right. And then they came for James O’Keefe, and I did not speak up because I was not a citizen journalist. And when they banned me there was no one left to tweet in my defense.”
Update:
At 6 PM on Thursday, O’Keefe’s account was reinstated after Twitter asked him to remove one tweet about his story.
